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Titanium & Plant Health: Miracle Micronutrient or Risky Gamble? · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello there, and welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, the founder of Utrema Ltd.
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  And we make novel fertilizers, interesting biostimulants, and organic biopesticides.
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  One of the things we don't make is titanium fertilizers.
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  But I would like to talk about titanium today, because it's really interesting.
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  We talked previously we did an episode
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  about first slices that can claim to
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  contain 70 80 90 elements and
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  said that this was either absolute bumcomb
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  is that the word bumcomb or nonsense or
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  they were very dangerous i didn't mention of
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  all the elements i mentioned on that podcast and there
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  was a lot i didn't mention titanium and for
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  good reason because it's not an essential element
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  but it's also not super toxic
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  to plants or radioactive or highly toxic
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  to humans but it is not straightforward it's
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  a really interesting element and so
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  we'll talk about that today in its own podcast episode when we think of titanium
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  we the first thing that comes to mind if you're a child of the 80s like me is
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  robocop and his titanium plated armor but titanium has a lot of uses Titanium
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  dioxide is used in sun cream.
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  They're white sun cream and lots of white dyes contain titanium.
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  It's a extremely, what's the word, flammable metal when you create a dust with
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  it, health and safety hazard.
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  But you can also get chelated titanium. Titanium lactate, I think,
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  is what's the chelated form that can be put into solution.
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  And let me just check that.
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  Yeah i can't find that but yeah so basically titanium it's
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  not an essential nutrient no studies ever shown
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  that plants need it to complete their life cycle and no
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  deficiency symptoms are known and you won't be able to get
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  any pictures of deficiency symptoms because because there
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  is no such thing however number of studies
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  have reported that growth and quality
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  of plants can be gained with low doses
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  of titanium and the key there is low doses which potentially
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  makes it a beneficial element so like
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  silicon okay but it's very
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  different to silicon and don't just jump to go and get titanium
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  fertilizer titanium ascorbate that's that's
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  the one that's commonly used as a chelated form
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  now the positive effects have been documented for
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  soluble chelated titanium salts applied to
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  roots and foliage and also for titanium
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  dioxide nanoparticles so not
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  the sort titanium you'd find in sun cream but the nanoparticles that can be
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  used for seed priming or for tholia sprays and the beauty of the nanoparticles
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  is that you can you can get the titanium into the plant which would be a problem
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  normally because it's such a big atom now.
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  The responses vary strongly between plant species, the type of titanium used,
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  the particle size, the application method, but they also depend on the amount
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  of titanium and also the nutrient status of the plant.
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  Now we talked in the past about Liebig's barrel and said that it's not,
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  really useful for anything other than elementary sort of level one plant nutrition,
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  plant nutrition 101 after that becomes a
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  lot more complicated because the amount of iron in
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  the plant governs how the plant will respond
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  to titanium addition and also the amount of titanium applied governs how the
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  plant will respond so the benefits are reported at low doses to begin with so
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  the number of studies frequently note like things like higher chlorophyll and
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  photosynthetic activity, more biomass,
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  improved nutrient uptake, stronger stress tolerance when the titanium's applied,
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  but it's normally in a situation where the growing media is lacking in nutrition.
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  Particularly iron nutrition.
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  Now, titanium can modulate nutrient acquisition and root architecture,
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  improve, increase these things that will absorb iron and also phosphorus uptake.
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  It's thought it does this by altering auxin levels and other rooting traits
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  and other biochemicals, things that would naturally absorb iron from the soil.
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  So sometimes they can be synergistic at low levels. If the iron is low and the
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  titanium is low, then they can help each other.
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  Some elements can actually substitute for each other, but I'm not sure,
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  I've not seen any reports of titanium substituting for iron in any enzymes or molecular things.
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  So you can also activate, increase antioxidant enzymes, which can be beneficial
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  for both crop growth and quality.
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  And enhanced tolerance to salinity and osmotic stress
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  and some pathogens so that's an
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  interesting one now at higher doses you get
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  toxicity from titanium so it's not a dose response curve it's what's termed
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  and i've never come across this before hormetic which means that low concentrations
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  tend to stimulate growth whereas higher doses can be neutral or inhibitory so
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  So excessive titanium in tissues is associated with chlorosis, yellowing,
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  or necrosis, death, and just the suppression of growth.
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  So this is a biphasic pattern and lacks well-defined toxic thresholds.
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  So you need to be really careful.
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  This is why I would never use a titanium fertilizer, because
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  it would be so easy to go from
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  the tiny little dose that's required to boost growth
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  to going over the edge and actually poisoning your
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  plants as it were it's not worth the risk really
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  you don't know what the other nutrient status is of
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  the plant what doesn't know how it would be
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  affected by the age of the plant things like this so you would really be taking
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  a gamble and it's not really a gamble you need to be taking better to just get
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  the other nutrients right increase the iron levels to where they're not deficient
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  that's the easiest answer for this so other interesting things though you can
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  have light dependent effects on photosynthesis so.
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  Photosynthesis so foliar applications titanium dioxide a bit like sun cream
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  for humans if you put the sun cream on the plants it can improve or it's been
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  found to improve light use efficiency and chlorophyll under low light,
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  but with neutral or negative shifts in some photochemical parameters and to
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  highlight that underscores the strong context dependency of titanium.
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  And that study was published in Nature. So this is not from titanium fertilizer
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  selling companies' websites.
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  I've got all this information from scientific journals
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  and you have to be careful with this because there's a lot of information about titanium fertilizers
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  just on the website to people who are trying to sell it and obviously they
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  will say it's an amazing product it's often sold
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  for sports turf and lawns because
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  of this ability to improve iron nutrition and
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  iron is a big one for sports and lawns not
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  so much in hydroponics so that's
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  something to consider if you're if you
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  look at the mobility of the plant and
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  the mobility of the of the elements i think it's quite
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  difficult to move around foliar applications can
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  enable uptakes through stomata but it depends on
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  the species and they often show low mobility
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  especially the nanoparticles so that's also something
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  to consider you can't just add this to your fertigation stream
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  and hope that it goes systemically around your plant interestingly gold nanoparticles
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  can actually be sprayed onto plants and can be used as a way of tracking the
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  absorption of metals through leaves because gold is an inert metal that won't
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  have any effect on the plant.
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  Can be accumulated in plants so an interesting story about titanium far from
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  straightforward and a lot of
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  gaps still in the knowledge base about how plants interact with titanium,
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  it's it's an area of study especially in
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  the biostimulant world a lot of biostimulants are have been
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  developed containing some titanium i'm not
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  sure where you get natural sources of to turn you in soil or in
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  the environment but if you know of any let me know and
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  perhaps around sun cream manufacturing sites
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  or anywhere where they make hardened armor
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  for the military or law enforcement if
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  you are more of an expert on that than me then let me know and i'd
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  love to hear from you that's been hydroponics daily for today if you
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  found it at all interesting or useful then
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  help share the podcast but do still follow the podcast click follow
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  and check out utreema.co.uk we don't sell
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  titanium fertilizers but we do sell fertilizer containing every essential nutrient
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  and some very interesting novel additives biostimulants and things you won't
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  find in anybody else's portfolio thank you very much listening for how to hydroponics
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  daily to date, and I'll see you again tomorrow. Goodbye.